...dropping the mast.....

A-frame in use on my old boat "Papillon" - looking towards the 
stern - line from the top of the frame to the top of the mast is the 
jib halyard - you can just see the mainsheet, which leads from the top 
of the frame to the stem fitting behind me....

With many thanks to Giblets (actual name Pete, but he'll always be Giblets ) skipper of the good ship Boobalena, and his crew Mike, on Saturday despite rain and general inclemency, we dropped the masts on the aforesaid Boobalena (a Leisure 17) and Sparrow...   no one fell overboard (apart from a padlock on Sparrow - my fault for leaving it on the cabin roof..), no one was hurt, more importantly the masts are good.

So what did we learn??

The mast on a Leisure 17 is small enough not to need an A frame [clicky] - which happily we figured out before the exercise, thus saving us some time. All we did was undo the lowers (which run forward), slacken off the uppers, tied the jib halyard to the main sheet (which was 3:1), and tied that off to the nose fitting. We then cranked on some pressure with the main sheet, undid the now looser forestay, and while I straddled the mast facing backwards to stop it swinging side to side, Pete let out main sheet, and as the mast lowered Mike guided it into the mast crutch at the back of the cockpit*...  jobs a good'un.....

So over to Sparrow to repeat - the differences being the mast is bigger so we did need the A frame, and I have roller furler foil, and my mast is a tabernacle type foot. Other than that it was largely the same - I used the jib halyard to the upper edge of the frame, with my main sheet providing the motive power to the lower edge. The A frame was tied off to the forward lower chain plates (the stays from which were now disconnected) - we then loosened off the aft lowers and the uppers, and I also loosened off the backstay so I could crank on enough down haul to the get the forestay undone. I then had to loosen this off quite a lot to get the lower bolt out of the mast foot/tabernacle (I also had to loosen off the top bolt), but out she came, and after that the same people took the same roles, and the mast was safely in the crutch...  we had to lift the mast slightly when we were two thirds down to move the mast crutch forward, but largely it went OK. I think the starboard upper must caught on top of the crutch or been squeezed by the crutch, at some point, as I lost a few pop rivets on the spreader, but no serious damage done (and a quick fix this winter)...

I then had to leave while Giblets took Booby under the brdige for her lift out, as my lift out was on Sunday..  which will be the next log update...

* ..and if a sentence that includes the phrases "straddle", "swinging" and "crutch" doesn't get me some extra page views I don't know what will....